Chapter 7　Find Yourself and Be Yourself: Remember There Is No One Else on Earth like You

I have a letter from Mrs. Edith Allred, of Mount Airy, North Carolina:“As a child, I was extremely sensitive and shy,”she says in her letter.“I was always overweight and my cheeks made me look even fatter than I was. I had an old-fashioned mother who thought it was foolish to make clothes look pretty. She always said:‘Wide will wear while narrow will tear’; and she dressed me accordingly. I never went to parties; never had any fun; and when I went to school, I never joined the other children in outside activities, not even athletics. I was morbidly shy. I felt I was‘different’from everybody else, and entirely undesirable.

“When I grew up, I married a man who was several years my senior. But I didn't change. My in-laws were a poised and self-confident family. They were everything I should have been but simply was not. I tried my best to be like them, but I couldn't. Every attempt they made to draw me out of myself only drove me further into my shell. I became nervous and irritable. I avoided all friends. I got so bad I even dreaded the sound of the doorbell ringing! I was a failure. I knew it; and I was afraid my husband would find it out. So, whenever we were in public, I tried to be gay, and overacted my part. I knew I overacted; and I would be miserable for days afterwards. At last I became so unhappy that I could see no point in prolonging my existence. I began to think of suicide.”

What happened to change this unhappy woman's life? Just a chance remark!“A chance remark,”Mrs. Allred continued,“transformed my whole life. My mother-in-law was talking one day of how she brought her children up, and she said:‘No matter what happened, I always insisted on their being themselves.’...‘On being themselves.’... That remark is what did it! In a flash, I realised I had brought all this misery on myself by trying to fit myself into a pattern to which I did not conform.

“I changed overnight! I started being myself. I tried to make a study of my own personality. Tried to find out what I was. I studied my strong points. I learned all I could about colours and styles, and dressed in a way that I felt was becoming to me. I reached out to make friends. I joined an organisationa small one at first—and was petrified with fright when they put me on a programme. But each time I spoke, I gained a little courage. It took a long while—but today I have more happiness than I ever dreamed possible. In rearing my own children, I have always taught them the lesson I had to learn from such bitter experience: No matter what happens, always be yourself!”

This problem of being willing to be yourself is“as old as history,”says Dr. James Gordon Gilkey,“and as universal as human life.”This problem of being unwilling to be yourself is the hidden spring behind many neuroses and psychoses and complexes. Angelo Patri has written thirteen books and thousands of syndicated newspaper articles on the subject of child training, and he says:“Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody and something other than the person he is in body and mind.”

This craving to be something you are not is especially rampant in Hollywood. Sam Wood, one of Hollywood's best-known directors, says the greatest headache he has with aspiring young actors is exactly this problem: to make them be themselves. They all want to be second-rate Lana Turners, or third-rate Clark Gables.“The public has already had that flavour,”Sam Wood keeps telling them;“now it wants something else.”

Before he started directing such pictures as Good-bye, Mr. Chips and For Whom the Bell Tolls, Sam Wood spent years in the real-estate business, developing sales personalities. He declares that the same principles apply in the business world as in the world of moving pictures. You won't get anywhere playing the ape. You can't be a parrot.“Experience has taught me,”says Sam Wood,“that it is safest to drop, as quickly as possible, people who pretend to be what they aren't.”

I recently asked Paul Boynton, employment director for the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, what is the biggest mistake people make in applying for jobs. He ought to know: he has interviewed more than sixty thousand job seekers; and he has written a book entitled 6 Ways to Get a Job. He replied:“The biggest mistake people make in applying for jobs is in not being themselves. Instead of taking their hair down and being completely frank, they often try to give you the answers they think you want.”But it doesn't work, because nobody wants a phony. Nobody ever wants a counterfeit coin.

A certain daughter of a street-car conductor had to learn that lesson the hard way. She longed to be a singer. But her face was her misfortune. She had a large mouth and protruding buck teeth. When she first sang in public—in a New Jersey night-club—she tried to pull down her upper Up to cover her teeth. She tried to act“glamorous”. The result? She made herself ridiculous. She was headed for failure.

However, there was a man in this night-club who heard the girl sing and thought she had talent.“See here,”he said bluntly,“I've been watching your performance and I know what it is you're trying to hide. You're ashamed of your teeth.”The girl was embarrassed, but the man continued:“What of it? Is there any particular crime in having buck teeth? Don't try to hide them! Open your mouth, and the audience will love you when they see you're not ashamed. Besides,”he said shrewdly,“those teeth you're trying to hide may make your fortune!”

Cass Daley took his advice and forgot about her teeth. From that time on, she thought only about her audience. She opened her mouth wide and sang with such gusto and enjoyment that she became a top star in movies and radio. Other comedians are now trying to copy her!

The renowned William James was speaking of men who had never found themselves when he declared that the average man develops only ten percent of his latent mental abilities.“Compared to what we ought to be,”he wrote,“we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.”

You and I have such abilities, so let's not waste a second worrying because we are not like other people. You are something new in this world. Never before, since the beginning of time, has there ever been anybody exactly like you; and never again throughout all the ages to come will there ever be anybody exactly like you again. The new science of genetics informs us that you are what you are largely as a result of twenty-four chromosomes contributed by your father and twenty-four chromosomes contributed by your mother. These forty-eight chromosomes comprise everything that determines what you inherit. In each chromosome there may be, says Amran Sheinfeld,“anywhere from scores to hundreds of genes—with a single gene, in some cases, able to change the whole life of an individual.”Truly, we are“fearfully and wonderfully”made.

Even after your mother and father met and mated, there was only one chance in 300,000 billion that the person who is specifically you would be born! In other words, if you had 300,000 billion brothers and sisters, they might have all been different from you. Is all this guesswork? No. It is a scientific fact. If you would like to read more about it, go to your public library and borrow a book entitled You and Heredity, by Amran Scheinfeld.

I can talk with conviction about this subject of being yourself because I feel deeply about it. I know what I am talking about. I know from bitter and costly experience. To illustrate: when I first came to New York from the cornfields of Missouri, I enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I aspired to be an actor. I had what I thought was a brilliant idea, a short cut to success, an idea so simple, so foolproof, that I couldn't understand why thousands of ambitious people hadn't already discovered it. It was this: I would study how the famous actors of that day—John Drew, Walter Hampden, and Otis Skinner—got their effects. Then I would imitate the best point of each one of them and make myself into a shining, triumphant combination of all of them. How silly I How absurd! I had to waste years of my life imitating other people before it penetrated through my thick Missouri skull that I had to be myself, and that I couldn't possibly be anyone else.

That distressing experience ought to have taught me a lasting lesson. But it didn't. Not me. I was too dumb. I had to learn it all over again. Several years later, I set out to write what I hoped would be the best book on public speaking for business men that had ever been written. I had the same foolish idea about writing this book that I had formerly had about acting: I was going to borrow the ideas of a lot of other writers and put them all in one book—a book that would have everything. So I got scores of books on public speaking and spent a year incorporating their ideas into my manuscript. But it finally dawned on me once again that I was playing the fool. This hodgepodge of other men's ideas that I had written was so synthetic, so dull, that no business man would ever plod through it. So I tossed a year's work into the wastebasket, and started all over again.

This time I said to myself:“You've got to be Dale Carnegie, with all his faults and limitations. You can't possibly be anybody else.”So I quit trying to be a combination of other men, and rolled up my sleeves and did what I should have done in the first place: I wrote a textbook on public speaking out of my own experiences, observations, and convictions as a speaker and a teacher of speaking. I learned—for all time, I hope—the lesson that Sir Walter Raleigh learned. (I am not talking about the Sir Walter who threw his coat in the mud for the Queen to step on. I am talking about the Sir Walter Raleigh who was professor of English literature at Oxford back in 1904.)“I can't write a book commensurate with Shakespeare,”he said,“but I can write a book by me.”

Be yourself. Act on the sage advice that Irving Berlin gave the late George Gershwin. When Berlin and Gershwin first met, Berlin was famous but Gershwin was a struggling young composer working for thirty-five dollars a week in Tin Pan Alley. Berlin, impressed by Gershwin's ability, offered Gershwin a job as his musical secretary at almost three times the salary he was then getting.“But don't take the job,”Berlin advised.“If you do, you may develop into a second-rate Berlin. But if you insist on being yourself, some day you'll become a first-rate Gershwin.”

Gershwin heeded that warning and slowly transformed himself into one of the significant American composer of his generation.

Charlie Chaplin, Will Rogers, Mary Margaret McBride, Gene Autry, and millions of others had to learn the lesson I am trying to hammer home in this chapter. They had to learn the hard way—just as I did.

When Charlie Chaplin first started making films, the director of the pictures insisted on Chaplin's imitating a popular German comedian of that day. Charlie Chaplin got nowhere until he acted himself. Bob Hope had a similar experience: spent years in a singing-and-dancing act—and got nowhere until he began to wisecrack and be himself. Will Rogers twirled a rope in vaudeville for years without saying a word. He got nowhere until he discovered his unique gift for humour and began to talk as he twirled his rope.

When Mary Margaret McBride first went on the air, she tried to be an Irish comedian and failed. When she tried to be just what she was—a plain country girl from Missouri—she became one of the most popular radio stars in New York.

When Gene Autry tried to get rid of his Texas accent and dressed like city boys and claimed he was from New York, people merely laughed behind his back. But when he started twanging his banjo and singing cowboy ballads, Gene Autry started out on a career that made him the world's most popular cowboy both in pictures and on the radio.

You are something new in this world. Be glad of it. Make the most of what nature gave you. In the last analysis, all art is autobiographical. You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must cultivate your own little garden. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.

As Emerson said in his essay on“Self-Reliance”:“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

That is the way Emerson said it. But here is the way a poet—the late Douglas Malloch—said it:

If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill.

Be a scrub in the valley—but be

The best little scrub by the side of the rill;

Be a bush, if you can't be a tree.

If you can't be a bush, be a bit of the grass.

And some highway happier make;

If you can't be a muskie, then just be a bass—

But the liveliest bass in the lake!

We can't all be captains, we've got to be crew.

There's something for all of us here.

There's big work to do and there's lesser to do

And the task we must do is the near.

If you can't be a highway, then just be a trail,

If you can't be the sun, be a star;

It isn't by the size that you win or you fail—

Be the best of whatever you are!

To cultivate a mental attitude that will bring us peace and freedom from worry:

LET'S NOT IMITATE OTHERS. LET'S FIND OURSELVES AND BE OURSELVES.

第七章　发现自己，做回有个性的自己

请记住，在这个世界上你是独一无二的。

我接到来自北卡罗来纳芒特艾里的伊迪斯·奥尔雷德女士的一封信，信里面写道：

“儿时的我极度敏感、羞涩。我偏胖，而我的双颊使我看起来比实际还要胖。我有个思维很守旧的母亲，她认为穿好看衣服是愚蠢的。她常说：‘衣服大了能过，小了则破。’她也是依照这个理念打扮我的。我从来没参加过派对，也没做过什么有意思的事。我在校时从来没跟其他学生一起参加过课外活动，甚至连体育项目也没参加过。我的害羞是病态的。我认为自己和别人不一样，完全不受欢迎。

“长大后我嫁给了一个长我几岁的男人，而我却没有改变。我丈夫一家人是优雅而自信的，那是我长久以来所憧憬却没能成为的人。我想尽办法试图变成他们那样的人，但我做不到，让我改变的一切尝试都使我更深地钻进自己的壳里。我变得紧张易怒，我回避一切朋友。情况变得特别糟糕以至于我对门铃声都产生了恐惧。我知道自己很没用，也很怕我丈夫会发现这一点。所以每当我们在公共场合时我都强颜欢笑，夸张地扮演自己的角色。但我知道我演过头了，而之后的几天我都会在抑郁中度过。最后我变得非常不快乐，以至于我看不到继续存在的意义。我开始有了自杀的念头。”

那么，是什么改变了这个不快乐的女人的人生呢？只是不经意的一句话！

奥尔雷德女士继续说道：“一句话就这样改变了我的整个人生。有一天我婆婆讲起她如何培养孩子时说：‘不论在任何情况下，我都让孩子们做自己。’……‘让他们做自己。’就是这句话！瞬间我明白了自己一直以来都是自寻烦恼，我试图把自己塞进并不合适的模子里。

“一夜间我忽然变了一个人！我开始做自己，我开始学习了解自己，我试着找到自己的身份和优势。我尝试了一切可能的颜色和款式，找到了属于自己的穿着风格。我开始拓展自己的朋友圈，我还加入了一个社团，最早时是个小规模的。当他们让我参加一个节目时，我被吓傻了，但每次讲话后我都会增加一些信心。虽然这是个漫长的过程，但今天的我拥有了从前无法想象的快乐。现在当我教育自己的孩子时，我也时刻铭记着自己从苦楚经历中学到的一课：不论发生什么，永远做自己！”

不愿做自己真是个“有史以来就有的问题”。詹姆斯·戈登·吉尔其博士说过：“它就像生命一样普遍。”它也是很多神经症状、精神问题和其他复杂问题的病根。关于儿童教育问题，安吉洛·帕特里写过十三本书，诸多报纸也曾数千次登载过他的文章。他曾说过：“没有比想拥有别人的身体和头脑更悲惨的事了。”

在好莱坞，这种想成为别人的渴望更为强烈。山姆·伍德，好莱坞最知名的导演之一曾说过，年轻演员让他最头疼的事莫过于不愿做自己。他们宁可去当二流的拉娜·特纳或三流的克拉克·盖博。“观众已经知道那些风格了。”山姆·伍德不停地对年轻演员说，“现在观众想看些不一样的。”

山姆·伍德在拍《万世师表》《战地钟声》等电影之前从事房地产工作，这练就了他的销售技能。他认为商界的准则在电影界也适用。东施效颦、鹦鹉学舌是行不通的。山姆·伍德说：“经验告诉我，最安全的方法就是尽可能早地停用那些一味模仿他人的演员。”

我问过保罗·博因顿——当时他是一个大石油公司的招聘主管，人们应聘时所犯的最大错误是什么。他一定知道答案——他曾面试过六万多名求职者并写过一本名叫《求职六法宝》的书。他是这样回答的：“应聘者犯下的最大错误就是不表现真实的自己。他们往往不能坦诚，总是给你他们认为你想听到的答案。”可是这招无效，因为没人喜欢虚伪的人。没有人想要伪造的金币。

一位公交车司机的女儿付出了很大代价才学到这个道理。她梦想成为一名歌手，然而不幸的是，她嘴很大还长着龅牙。第一次在公开场合——新泽西的一个夜店演唱时，她尽量伸长上嘴唇试图盖住牙齿，她想表现得魅力四射。结果呢？她把自己弄得很可笑，这注定将失败。

不过夜店里的一位男士听到她的歌声后认为她很有天赋，于是直白地对她说：“是这样的。我一直观察着你的演出，我知道你想隐藏什么。你不好意思露出你的牙齿！”女孩很难为情，但男人继续说道：“那又怎样？长了龅牙又犯了什么罪吗？别试图藏起它们！张开嘴，当观众们看到你并不以此为耻时他们会爱你的。而且……”他机智地说，“你试图遮掩的牙齿或许还是你的财富呢！”

卡斯·戴莉听从了他的建议，抛下了对牙齿的顾忌。从那时起，她的脑中只有观众。她张大嘴巴，带着由衷的兴致与愉悦唱歌，后来成了电影和电台的大明星，一些喜剧演员还试图模仿她呢！

大名鼎鼎的威廉·詹姆斯谈到那些从未找到自我的人时说，一般人只开发了自身能力的10％。“与我们的潜能比较，我们只是半醒的人。我们只用了体能和智力资源的一小部分。概括地说，人类目前为止没有突破个人的局限性，他们拥有很多本领却没能加以运用。”

你和我都具备这样的能力，所以我们不要浪费一秒钟在烦恼上，因为我们不像那些人一样。你是世上的新生事物。有史以来，在你之前从未有过和你一模一样的人；从此之后的世世代代里也不会再有一个同样的你出现。遗传科学告诉我们，你是由父母各自遗传给你的二十三个染色体形成的。这四十六个染色体决定了你的全部基因。阿姆拉姆·善菲尔德说：“每个染色体中都有几十到几百个基因——而有时一个基因就能改变一个机体的整个生命。”的确，生命的形成是“令人畏惧而又奇妙”的。

在父母孕育的过程中，你成形的概率只有三百万亿分之一！也就是说，假如你有三百万亿个兄弟姐妹，没有一个会与你完全相同。这都是猜测吗？不，这都是科学事实。如果你想了解更多相关知识，请参考阿姆拉姆·善菲尔德所著的《你与遗传》一书。

在做自己这个话题上我坚定不移地支持，因为我感同身受。我知道自己在说什么——我付出了苦楚而巨大的代价。举个例子来说吧，当我第一次走出密苏里的玉米田来到纽约时，我报名加入了美国戏剧学院，我一心想成为演员。我以为自己的主意棒极了，这是一个成功的捷径，我好奇如此简单而又万无一失的想法怎么成千上万的有志之士都没有想到过呢？我的主意是这样的：我会学习约翰·德鲁、沃尔特·汉普登、欧提斯·斯金纳等当时知名演员的演技，然后模仿他们每个人的亮点，并把自己变成一个闪亮、成功的明星组合体。多么愚蠢！多么荒唐！我浪费了人生中几年的时间去模仿别人，最后我那厚厚的密苏里脑壳终于想通了：我应该做我自己——其实也根本无法做别人。

这令人沮丧的经历按说应该给了我深深的教训，但是没有。我太愚蠢了，于是又重蹈覆辙。几年以后，我准备写一本关于商界人士演说技巧的书，以为它会成为同类中最好的书。而对于这本书我犯了和当初想演戏时同样的错误：我想把所有同类书籍中的好想法全都借鉴进来，写成一本无所不包的书。所以我找到一大堆关于演说的书，用了一年的时间把里面的想法融汇到我的稿子里，然而我最终再次意识到我又做了愚蠢的行为。这种他人思想的大杂烩读起来既不自然又很无趣，没有商界人士会读完这样一本书。所以我把一年的心血丢进了垃圾桶，重新来过。这次我告诉自己：“你只能是戴尔·卡耐基，不论有怎样的缺点和局限性。你根本不可能成为其他人。”于是我不再试图成为其他人的混合体，我卷起袖管，做了从一开始就该做的事。我用自己的经历、观察以及身为演说技巧讲师所形成的观点写了一本关于演说的教科书。我永远都会记得（也希望自己做到如此）瓦尔特·罗利爵士带给我们的教诲：“我无法写出莎士比亚那样的书，但我能写属于我自己的书。”（这里的瓦尔特·罗利爵士不是把自己的外衣扔在泥地里以供女皇行走的那个人，而是1904年牛津大学的英文文学系教授。）

做自己，厄文·博林给晚辈乔治·格什温的忠告适合我们每个人。当博林和格什温初见时，博林已经名声大振，而格什温还是一个在锡盘巷(1)为了每周赚三十五美金而苦苦奋斗的年轻的歌曲创作者。格什温的才华给博林留下了深刻印象，于是博林邀请格什温担任他的音乐秘书，并开出了相当于之前三倍的工资。博林又建议道：“不过别接受这份工作，否则你会成为二流的博林。但你若坚持做自己，有一天你会成为一流的格什温。”

格什温一直把这个警告放在心上，后来逐渐成了美国那一代中最具影响力的作曲家。

查理·卓别林、威尔·罗杰斯、玛丽·玛格丽特·麦克布莱德、吉恩·奥特里等众多的人都得到了我在本章中一再强调的经验教训，也都像我一样付出了代价。

卓别林刚拍电影时，导演坚持要求他模仿一个德国著名喜剧演员，因而卓别林在决定演出自己的特色之前事业毫无进展。鲍勃·霍普也有类似的经历：他又唱又演了好几年都没有成绩，直到有一天开始说段子、做自己才走红。威尔·罗杰斯在歌舞杂耍表演中默默转绳子好几年，后来他发现了自己独特的喜剧天赋，凭着边转绳子边说话才出了名。

玛丽·玛格丽特·麦克布莱德刚上广播电台时曾试图表现成一名爱尔兰喜剧演员但不成功。而当她只去做自己——一个普通的密苏里乡下女孩时，她成了纽约最受欢迎的广播明星之一。

吉恩·奥特里想方设法掩饰自己的得克萨斯口音，并把自己打扮得像个纽约男孩，宣称自己是纽约人，人们都在背后笑话他的做法。而当他拨起班卓琴，唱起牛仔民谣时，他的职业生涯的大门打开了。他成了大银幕上和广播里闻名世界的牛仔。

你是世界上崭新的个体。记住这一点并为此高兴吧。最大限度地实现大自然赋予你的一切。归根结底，一切艺术都是自传。你只能以自己的角度唱歌、画画。你必定是你的经历、环境和基因塑造的。不论好坏，你必须培育自己的小花园，必须在人生交响乐中奏响自己的乐器。

爱默生一篇随笔《自助》中写道：“每个人在求知的过程中早晚会发现：嫉妒是无知，模仿是自我毁灭；他必须接受自己的好与不好，不论是怎样的比例；虽然大千世界物产富饶，但有营养的玉米只会长在自己辛勤耕种的田地里。每个人被赋予的能量都是崭新的，除了自己以外无人知晓你能做什么，若不尝试你也不会知道。”

而诗人道格拉斯·玛拉赫是这样说的：

如果你不能成为山顶上的一棵松，

那就做山谷中的一株灌木——

但要做溪边最好的那株小灌木；

做不成一棵大树，就做一株灌木。

如果你不能成为一株灌木，那就做一片草地，

把公路点缀出喜悦的色彩；

如果你不能成为狼鱼，那就做一条鲈鱼——

但要做湖中最活跃的那条鲈鱼！

我们不能都做船长，还要有船员，

每个人都有适合的岗位。

工作有大有小，

而必须完成的是眼前的事。

如果你不能成为高速公路，那就做一条羊肠小径。

如果你不能做太阳，那就做星星；

成功不在于大小，

而在于你是否做到最好。

为了培养平和、自由的心态，请记住：

让我们停止模仿他人。

让我们发现自己、做回自己。

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(1) 译者按：19世纪末到20世纪初纽约曼哈顿流行音乐出版社和创作人的聚集地。